Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 27 January 2005
18 Ms O’Sullivan asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food her views on the figures from the European Environment Agency which suggest that the vast majority of forestry plantations here since 1990 were on bog-land; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [1927/05]
View answerThe Deputy is referring to a recent report from the European Environmental Agency, EEA, which suggested that 84% of planting since 1990 has taken place on peat-lands. This figure does not in any way correspond to the information available to my Department.
In reply to a number of questions from Deputy Sargent on the matter on 2 December 2004, I indicated that my Department had requested copies of the datasets used by the EEA in arriving at its conclusion. These have just been received and are being examined by the forest service of my Department. From the forest service's own analysis of the position, it appears that the level of planting on peat-lands has been significantly overstated in the EEA report.
The forest service is completing its own review of the planting pattern at present, using information taken from grant application forms, as well as the recently collated data produced by Teagasc under the forest soils classification and productivity coverage research project. Preliminary results indicate that the actual level of afforestation on peat-lands is between 27.8% and 43.5% depending on whether the ‘landcover' dataset or the ‘soils' dataset is used for comparison. It should be noted that the higher figure includes planting on wet grassland. However, both figures are derived from substantially higher resolution datasets than were used in the EEA study and therefore reflect a more accurate assessment of peat-land planting in Ireland.
It is clear, therefore, that the figure reported by the EEA in respect of planting on peat-lands is substantially incorrect and my Department will now be raising this matter formally with the agency.
